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Non-Tech : Datek Brokerage $9.95 a trade -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jason Rooks who wrote (6689)	2/6/1998 6:07:00 PM
From: RealMuLan	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 16892

Jason: The first time I found out was in July, when most of my stocks were short. Even if they don't pay interest on short, they are not supposed to charge interest. And it was way off. They charged me for $117 something margin interest, and then gave me $71 something for refund after I complained, which was over 39%. But generally speaking, it is very difficult to calculate whether they overcharge you or not if you are a frequent trader, because Datek never gives you the number of the average daily balance they based on. And their accountants are lack of the most basic arithmetic training. Even if with the help of all those advanced software, they still frequently make mistakes. This really PS me off. In my case, in NOV, DEC, and Jan, I made none or one trade. That means my average daily balance did not even change, and they still overcharged me. They also have a tendency to overlap the day. Say last month charged you to 28th, and next month they sometimes started to calculate still on 28th. That means they charged you twice on 28th. If your margin is low, the difference won't be much, but if you borrow $50-60k or more, that makes difference. The basic formular they used should be the same as the bank: the amount of money you borrowed overnight0.07/365(days)number of days for that amount. The problems for traders is that their daily balance keeps changing, so it is sort of difficult to calculate. Hope this helps.